I wanted to link to images of those Indian embroideries, and spent about an hour looking for something similar. They were not palampore, although similar. Palampore are painted tree of life fabrics from 18th century India. Occasionally they were embroidered , as is this one in the Victoria and Albert museum. (copy and paste the link below)

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O63060/palampore-unknown/

But my memory is of gay brilliantly coloured red yellow and green floral and geometric imagery. They were not kanthas. I don't think they were suzanni from central Asia, (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan) ...I was sure they were from India. This link will show the kind of colours I remember, and these are suzani. Covered with embroidery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzani_(textile)

It was one of my first face to face exposures to world textiles and I might have mis remembered some of the facts.

I do remember the impact the hand work had on my body and ultimately my work.